Chinese Drone Maker DJI Might Get Banned Next in the US (nytimes.com) 107
U.S. authorities consider DJI a security threat. Congress is weighing legislation to ban it [non-paywalled link], prompting a lobbying campaign from the company, which dominates the commercial and consumer drone markets. The New York Times: DJI is on a Defense Department list of Chinese military companies whose products the U.S. armed forces will be prohibited from purchasing in the future. As part of the defense budget that Congress passed for this year, other federal agencies and programs are likely to be prohibited from purchasing DJI drones as well. The drones -- though not designed or authorized for combat use -- have also become ubiquitous in Russia's war against Ukraine.
The Treasury and Commerce Departments have penalized DJI over the use of its drones for spying on Uyghur Muslims who are held in camps by Chinese officials in the Xinjiang region. Researchers have found that Beijing could potentially exploit vulnerabilities in an app that controls the drone to gain access to large amounts of personal information, although a U.S. official said there are currently no known vulnerabilities that have not been patched. Now Congress is weighing legislation that could kill much of DJI's commercial business in the United States by putting it on a Federal Communications Commission roster blocking it from running on the country's communications infrastructure.
The bill, which has bipartisan support, has been met with a muscular lobbying campaign by DJI. The company is hoping that Americans like Mr. Nordfors who use its products will help persuade lawmakers that the United States has nothing to fear -- and much to gain -- by keeping DJI drones flying. "DJI presents an unacceptable national security risk, and it is past time that drones made by Communist China are removed from America," Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York and one of the bill's primary sponsors, said in an emailed statement this month.
The Treasury and Commerce Departments have penalized DJI over the use of its drones for spying on Uyghur Muslims who are held in camps by Chinese officials in the Xinjiang region. Researchers have found that Beijing could potentially exploit vulnerabilities in an app that controls the drone to gain access to large amounts of personal information, although a U.S. official said there are currently no known vulnerabilities that have not been patched. Now Congress is weighing legislation that could kill much of DJI's commercial business in the United States by putting it on a Federal Communications Commission roster blocking it from running on the country's communications infrastructure.
The bill, which has bipartisan support, has been met with a muscular lobbying campaign by DJI. The company is hoping that Americans like Mr. Nordfors who use its products will help persuade lawmakers that the United States has nothing to fear -- and much to gain -- by keeping DJI drones flying. "DJI presents an unacceptable national security risk, and it is past time that drones made by Communist China are removed from America," Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York and one of the bill's primary sponsors, said in an emailed statement this month.
This is insane (Score:3, Insightful)
We turned over nearly all of our manufacturing to China and now we are escalating a trade war
They could cause massive harm by cutting off all exports of everything
Even worse, they are smart people. What happens if they develop tech that we need, and refuse to sell it to us?
The trade war has no winners, we all lose
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How many wars has China begun in the last 50 years?
First, define 'war'. Then, there's Viet Nam, Tibet, the South China Sea. Plus numerous instances of head-butting with India on their shared border.
How many military invasions has the United States initiated?
Many. But in each instance, have we maintained an occupation of that territory?
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That will make Taiawn warm and cozy... Oh, sorry, The Republic of China You know, the actual 5th seat on the UN Security Council
Re: This is insane (Score:1)
Oh look, a PRC propagandist rewriting history. Tibet has historically been either independent or part of India, not China. There are other regions in the north and west of China that werenâ(TM)t originally part of China (Uyghurs etc). The naval issues you talk about is because China is abusing international law, making fake islands, then claiming 100 miles around it is now Chinese despite it originally being Japan, Vietnam and Taiwanese waters.
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"But in each instance, have we maintained an occupation of that territory?"
No, we usually lost. Like in Vietnam. Or Afghanistan. Or Iraq. Or Syria. or .... We are still in Germany and Japan where we won. And Korea, which ended in a stalemate. And Syria and Iraq for that matter although we long since lost control in either. I think the argument that China's border clashes with Vietnam and India or tensions in the South China Sea are remotely comparable is silly. Tibet has been part of China for several centu
Re: This is insane (Score:2)
No, we usually lost. Like in Vietnam. Or Afghanistan. Or Iraq. Or Syria. or .... We are still in Germany and Japan where we won. And Korea, which ended in a stalemate.
Well let's go through these one by one:
Vietnam: North Vietnam surrendered, resulting in an overall military victory for the US, the US trained and equipped south Vietnam to take over, US leaves, two years later North Vietnam invades South Vietnam and wins. Military defeat for South Vietnam, political defeat for the US. At the time anyways; these days, Vietnam prefers to be on good terms with us and is no longer allies with the groups and nations that supported them in that war.
Afghanistan: US quickly defeat
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Hey hey, come on. They're spending like mad on their military. Only 20% or so short of the recommended NATO minimum!
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There be a lot of doubt about both. But claiming "no doubt" about either makes the first more likely. The warmongers are on the march.
There is really no reason we can't have the same cooperative partnership with China we have had for the last 50 years. Except, of course, that they are no longer junior partners and that is unacceptable to our ruling elite that has grown up in control of the "only super power". The notion that the world and its leaders could extend beyond Concord and New Haven is beyond thei
Re:This is insane (Score:4, Interesting)
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1. No, it is not. China has no interest in an actual war with the US.
2. No, the US will not "win". Not being able to buy Chinese goods will alone already destroy the US economy. Nothing to "win" left after that.
3. Well. This may have been sarcasm (if so, then badly done).
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2. No, the US will not "win". Not being able to buy Chinese goods will alone already destroy the US economy. Nothing to "win" left after that.
The second the shelves at Walmart are empty, people will be pissed. Like vote out the current president pissed.
Never underestimate the ability of Republicans to propose something they know the Democrats are stupid enough to go along with, and the Democrats will be the ones taking the bulk of the blame. I'm fairly certain that was their plan with TikTok, too.
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War doesn't always start with a clear-headed, cold-blooded weighing of national interests. In fact I'd say that's the more the exception than the rule. Historically it's quite common for a country to start a war that in retrospect looks stupid from the standpoint of national interests.
Of course peaceful initiatives can be just as badly thought ought. We quite *deliberately* chose to tie our economy to China; I remember this quite distinctly. Although nobody anticipated the speed or completeness of the in
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The problem now is that unwinding that deal requires local production which will need to be protected from Chinese efficiency and scale by a wall of trade barriers, which, in turn, will cause large consumer price increases while at the same time not employing many people b
Re: This is insane (Score:1)
China is otherwise quite aggressive. There will be war in the next few decades. I donâ(TM)t think US v China will be a hot war, it will be either a cold war 2 or world war 3 where it is (once again) Europe being invaded by Russia and Germany attempting to take over (they laid the groundwork with their push for EU sovereignty - which is really German rule - and now an EU army - which will really be a German army) with this time Iran funding a significant third party (like Mussolini in WW2), China and th
Re:This is insane (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently they're not THAT smart...to date, pretty much all they've done (with our blessing) is steal our US tech and use it against us....
Right now, it is best we do EVERYTHING we can to extricate ourselves from this bad relationship with China and move as much manufacturing as we can back domestically.
At least, move it to other, more friendly countries and not just one.....we need to learn our lessons from COVID....and not let those memories fade away as that we only got a SMALL taste of how bad it could get being dependent of China...or anyone other one country other than being as self sufficient as possible with regard to our manufacturing and food supply....oh and energy.
Re:This is insane (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently they're not THAT smart...to date, pretty much all they've done (with our blessing) is steal our US tech and use it against us....
That has been over for quite a while. You seem to have been deep asleep while the world changed. Europe still has some things they might want to copy, but anything the US can make, China can make as well these days. And they sometimes can make it better.
No, I am not a fan of China. But underestimating an opponent is a really, really stupid mistake.
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I work at a research university in the U.S. I find your claim that China doesn't care about acquiring U.S. technology to be absolutely hilarious.
I could tell you one story after another, up to and including the not-so-subtle six-figure bribes my colleagues
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Consumer goods? Sure.
Machinery, industrial equipment, and so on? Not even close on the high end.
But it's within spitting distance for midrange, and enough for almost applications, at a fraction of the cost.
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When it comes to food and energy, we are net exporters of both. We grow enough food to cover our population and we generate enough electricity and drill enough oil to also support our population. The real problem is those things are "commodities" and are traded globally, which hurts US consumers since our own companies don't really have much of an obligation to sell to us if they can sell to another country for more money.
Regarding manufacturing. Yes, we've sent much of it out of the country and we should b
Re:This is insane (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently they're not THAT smart...to date, pretty much all they've done (with our blessing) is steal our US tech and use it against us....
Spoken like someone who has not flown a DJI drone. Their consumer products are way ahead of anything any US manufacturer is offering at the same price point.
Back in the day, the opening scene in The Birdcage [youtube.com] required a helicopter and expensive camera equipment, and today that expensive rig is arguably inferior to what you'd get from a DJI Mini 3 Pro. [youtube.com] Hell, trying to recreate the helicopter portion of that opening scene with my Mavic Air is still on my bucket list of things to do next time I make a trip to Miami. Even though it's older and less fancy than what that YouTuber has, it still holds its own quite well.
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Apparently they're not THAT smart...to date, pretty much all they've done (with our blessing) is steal our US tech and use it against us....
DJI is the market leader in drone tech because their tech is the best. It can't be stolen because it's better than everyone else's.
That's the real issue here. DJI is dominating the market because they have better products and are first to market with new features. Like Huawei, that is a problem for Western rivals, so they are pushing for a ban.
You must have worse tech and pay more for it, because Western companies failed to compete effectively.
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I can't help thinking about a hidden agenda. Manufacturing moved to China so we now pay American prices for Chinese products sold by American companies. Due to the internet and business developments, consumers can sometimes buy Chinese products from Chinese companies at Chinese prices which are often a small fraction of the American price. Incidentally, Chinese products are much more likely to be repair friendly and have good availability of off the shelf 3rd party replacement parts.
I have to wonder how muc
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I can't help thinking about a hidden agenda.
The hidden agenda is that the government hates hobbyist photography drone pilots. Part of it is because a handful of morons do stupid things with them (disrupting flights and sportsball games, and crashing them in inaccessible places then leaving them as e-litter), and the other part is likely that commercial drone delivery companies want exclusive access to the airspace and have been lobbying to that effect.
DJI more-or-less has a monopoly over the consumer photography drone market, so a ban essentially en
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Right.... Because if/when DJI is banned, everybody is simply going to put their controllers down and never fly another drone again. There won't be any companies that step in to fill the void...
Your conspiracy theory has more holes that a block of Swiss cheese
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It's not the manufacturing, e.g. Apple stuff is made in China but with Apple tech. It's the fact that the Western tech is inferior to the Chinese stuff.
It's not just drones either. FLIR had the market cornered for thermal cameras, but now a Chinese company offers higher resolution sensors with a better frame rate and similar accuracy, for a fraction of the cost. Chinese EV batteries are second to none. Chinese phone cameras surpassed everyone except maybe Google some years ago. In the HiFi world Chinese bra
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Most desktop 3D printers are Chinese. The American ones (made in China) mostly went away because they cost 10x as much, were near impossible to repair, and some were drowning in DRM.
If American companies don't stop phoning it in and demanding huge margins (or running with terrible efficiency), they will be left behind.
We're just moving it to India (Score:1)
Without a threat they'll be a winding down our military spending, so China's on tap. For their part I'm sure they could use a little of the old MIC to keep their economy going. Not the best way to do socialism but I guess it works after a fashion.
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Indeed. This is completely insane. This whole trade war has the stink of desperation on the US side.
Top 10 American Companies in China (Score:2)
1. KFC
2. Apple
3. Tesla
4. Nike
5. Starbucks
6. P&G
7. Walmart
8. Coca Cola
9. Boeing
10. Microsoft
How long before one of them gets a notice to hand over their keys?
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Apple and Tesla are only allowed to keep their source code closed, all uploaded data has to go through a Pooh controlled company in clear text.
Project Texas is almost what Pooh forced on Apple and Tesla (except that ByteDance and thus Pooh would still have control over the subsidiary, for hiring for instance, Apple and Tesla have no real control over their Chinese datacenters). Apple and Tesla are special in that regard, China simply banned all other companies with similar levels of access to Chinese citize
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I don't think they have frequently active apps uploading location data.
Location is the most important information, Microsoft doesn't have it.
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We already lost because we willingly off-shored all our manufacturing* in a manner of a few decades.
Why would they cut off all exports, that harms their own industry.
* 'To hell in a hand basket'.
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Appeasement through trade was a dangerous game, will it get less dangerous by appeasing harder?
The private data of every naive American citizens an open book to a dictator, what's next? A defacto allied democracy abandoned to the dictatorship? Force an outright allied nation to grant them disputed land?
Kissinger's realpolitik has become real messy.
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Cut off the pharmaceuticals for a few years and we'll have all-new politicians.
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They don't have to cut off exports to you, you're working hard on doing it to yourselves.
There's lots of manufacturing in the US. Enjoy your $10,000 Pentagon approved hobby drones!
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What happens if they develop tech that we need, and refuse to sell it to us?
We steal it. (Kidding.)
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All of us who buy made in China because it's cheaper are at fault.
We wouldn't need to buy cheaper products if wages weren't such shit. At its core, the problem is greedy American businesses valuing maximum profit above all else.
Chinese everything will get banned eventually (Score:5, Insightful)
If China keeps siding with Russia (or decides to try it's own military fortune on other people's territory), it's making a choice that other countries cannot ignore.
Re:Chinese everything will get banned eventually (Score:5, Informative)
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It seems that a very large part of the world, including China and India, has been very successful at ignoring Russia's choice. The real problem is that doing business with China is becoming increasingly less dispensable to that large part of the world while doing business with the US has become increasingly more dispensable.
Taiwan is Chinese territory according to most of the world. That includes many people on Taiwan who don't like the current Chinese government. That doesn't mean they will approve of th
Meh (Score:3)
DJI has already spun off a US division and licensed their products to them. So even if DJI is banned, the US company will continue to offer their products.
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...and continue making profits, which is the most important thing!
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Do you know what the US division is called? I'm just curious to look it up and how they did it with the looming TikTok legislation and wanted to compare them but I cant find anything specific to a divestment. Did they license to another American company?
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Anzu Robotics. The designs are identical.
https://www.techradar.com/came... [techradar.com]
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Hope the DJI CEO cleared that with Pooh, or he might get a special vacation.
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Thank you, it's interesting that they just are using the DJI hardware and it was a one time deal with DJI
If Raptor drones use DJI tech, how does it avoid restrictions in US air space? Well, the drones are manufactured outside of China in Malaysia and use domestically-developed software created in collaboration with Aloft Technologies
Quite interesting. (Score:2)
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And they aren't actually criticizing one group of people either, rather they are criticizing the prime minister and government of one group of people. It really is interesting. Also both peoples involved in this conflict are Semitic if we use the literal definition of the term.
Others use this same tactic of conflating opposition to government or policy with hatred of a race. The CCP in China does this all the time. They've managed to convince a large majority of Chinese citizens that if anyone in the we
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I don't think they sold too many Mercedes' during World War II. Not doing business with the enemy is pretty much standard policy. And make no mistake, China is the enemy,
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What makes China "the enemy"?
Turn you back to them and and find out most business people have already found that the Chinese are only nice while they need you or want something from you
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And make no mistake, China is the enemy,
Because they're winning at the game of capitalism? Or because of some nebulous fear that some government official in the CCP is getting their rocks off knowing that you walked your dog at exactly 6:17PM yesterday?
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As far as I understand it there is no federal BDS laws, those are all state and local things.
Wrong approach to solving a security problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of banning individual products or companies over potential security issues seems a very poor way of going about solving the problem.
Lawmakers should identify the security issues and lay out exactly what their concerns are, identifying exactly what should be prohibited, with some technical guidance to make this practical.
Trying to legislate just based on FUD takes us back to the McCarthy period.
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The US should start to steer itself away from any dependence on products from antagonistic countries.
Start immediately with any products that have obvious national security implications, and work your way down from those...slowly ween yourself off that test, and bring home as much manufacturing domestically and that which remains external to the US...should be in multiple friendly countries so as not to have a monoculture of any one country potentially holding us by the "short and curli
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Sounds good, but greed, arrogance and stupidity have made that pretty much impossible by now. Unless you _want_ to completely destroy the US economy?
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What?!!! And risk our businesses' profits? Are you INSANE?!!! American exist so rich people can run multinational companies and fleece pretty much all of us for insane profits. Huge portions of our legal system are designed to ensure this doesn't change.
Sure, I'd love to implement some sensible regulation that don't immediately become a barrier to entry for competition, but let's face it, anti-trust is just something we pretend to care about so as to entertain the voters while they give a *wink* *nudge* to
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What?!!! And risk our businesses' profits?
Oh you sweet summer child, businesses won't ever accept lower profits. They'll simply pass the costs on to consumers.
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The US should start to steer itself away from any dependence on products from antagonistic countries.
So, more money for inferior products just so we can have it say "Hecho en USA" on the label? If you think inflation is bad now, buckle up buckaroos!
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Here is a real security issue: US companies offshoring writing of critical software to China, India, Pakistan, etc.
I still remember a phone conference a few years back that I had with a customer and their US supplier (a major name in the IT area) over the encryption algorithms used in a security critical device mty customer wanted to buy. The lead engineer and his team were dialed in from Shanghai.
If you do crap like that, you really do not need to worry about buying from Chinese manufacturers. You get the
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It really shouldn't matter who writes the software.
That is, however, assuming you get all the source and review it all.
I have a stack of DJi drones (Score:2)
The only reason I find this, what. . . funny, relevant. . . whatever, is because these items were provided by the DOD.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Meh (Score:2)
This is, at least to me, not the same as Chinese-controlled social media or networking infrastructure.
It's worth ensuring the control system doesn't phone home or have backdoors - or maybe requiring an open source app so there's less questions of that in the first place, but that's about it.
This is why (Score:3)
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You? No. But it might tell the Chinese government about things like troop movements or when a prominent politician is home.
It's surprising how much usable Intel can be extracted from what looks like garbage data. The real issue is the collecting and processing of so much data to effectively extract that useful data.
FOX News (Score:2)
FOX News is owned by a foreign adversary - the Murdochs - who relentlessly attempt to meddle in American politics. Are we going to force the Murdochs to divest? Do we see DJI attempting to meddle with our political system? Not one iota.
American oligarchs are late stage capitalist pigs who underperform and then cry for government bail outs and protection when another country eats their lunch. And then they have the nerve to cry "socialism!!!" None of the anti-China rhetoric has one iota to do with "nati
Hmmm (Score:2)
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Remember when the left got mad that Trump was putting tariffs on Chinese imports and they called it racist? Now their guy is cutting them out altogether!
Biden was never the guy the left wanted in the first place. The left wanted Bernie. Even Buttigieg was labeled too centrist by the left because he kept going on Fox's town halls and trying to meet the MAGA folks half way.
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Forced buyout, you mean .... Sell or be banned (Score:2)
Sell it or be banned.
Looks like every Chinese boardroom is in the crosshairs.
Huawei first. Tiktok second.
Is Genshin Impact next?
I have a Mavic Pro (Score:2)
Russia will buy up the surplus stock cheap... (Score:2)
DJI will make a "silent new company" (Score:1)
and the trade war continues... (Score:2)